Yarden Garden: Starting a Social Enterprise Spotlight

Social entrepreneurship is the new sexy. Not only that, we and the world need social entrepreneurs. We love when people are out there making the world a better place. Let’s give some love to the social entrepreneurs and social enterprises out there that are making a difference but might not be getting all the PR and media that they deserve.

Here’s where we change that. In this feature showcase, I choose one social entrepreneur per week and introduce them to you. So, let’s get started!

How long in business:

10 months (less than 1 year)

What big problems are they solving?

1.Lack of health literacy and food literacy

Today, people don’t have local access to gardens or food literacy. According to Jason’s experience of losing 165 lbs by eating healthy, such as fresh vegetables that his family grew, and of seeing his nephews eat the same exact food as he was, health literacy is about the same as his was growing up and schools, all they are teaching about eating healthy much are the same diet was being fed to them.

65% of all home in America had a garden during World War 2 and it turned to commodity crop farming now for the purposes of turning into processing foods, which is completely unhealthy and unnecessary, and unfresh. Much of our crop fresh produce is more than 90 days old, which brings us to gases and GMOs to help all the produce, grow bigger, last longer and sustain the wear and tear distribution travel chain.

Commodity crop farming leads mono crop culturing with high usage of pesticide and the distribution for those crops requires millions of gallons of fuel per year to burn lean to go to the atmosphere. All these problems that we have, climate change, water waste and food waste, human health awareness, need to be addressed in an impressive but practical way.

How are they solving these problems?

Yarden is a home gardening platform for people who want edible gardens. Yarden maintains gardens that their customers own, harvests their produce, and set it at the door steps ready to eat. The “Yardeners” handle that distribution and are out maintaining the gardens weekly, and they also harvest and pack produce.

The reality is that people grow vegetables in their gardens without proper knowledge so it ends up ruining the vegetables and wasting water. On the contrary, “Yardners” are professional. They know how to grow vegetables and herbs, so to the customers, the gardening gets done without too much effort. All they need to do is just to decide what to do with the produce, which is trade and eat it, sell it to the restraints, or give it away to the charity to the local food bank.

Yarden decreases food waste, water usage, pesticide usage, the greenhouse gases due to food distribution, and increases health and human wellness, food circulating in the community, and job creation.

Yarden’s customers have the option of getting a Mediterranean, East Indian & Asian, or an American Liberty garden with all the corresponding vegetables and herbs that can be found on the homepage.

Why should we pay attention to them?

Yarden has under 50 customers in the Bay Area and 98% of the customer satisfaction rate. Since they grow 50 pounds per every 100 square feet of garden with high maintenance gardening, Yarden encourages their customers to donate their produce to the local food banks and 100% of their customers donate 20% of their produce to the local food banks in Alameda County. They are very excited that their customers are conscious enough to respond to that accordingly.

With a Master's in Social Entrepreneurship from Hult International Business School, Keisuke is an entrepreneur with over 10 years of experience, specializing in system engineering, marketing & growth, customer support, education, fundraising, and writing.